News of the events at Fortress Monroe in late May 1861 quickly spread around the United States, leaving the press to react to what had occurred there. Press opinion would be critical to decide whether the Lincoln administration would back Benjamin Butler, particularly those papers aligned with the Republican Party. A key newspaper in that regard was the Chicago Tribune, from Abraham Lincoln’s home state of Illinois and a major backer of both Lincoln and the Republican Party. When confronted with the news of what had occurred, the Tribune supported General Butler solidly in May 28, 1861 issue, even forcefully. Its editorial on the subject, under the incongruous title “Army Slave Catching,” read:

The Chicago Tribune represented a significant segment of northern public opinion long fed up with the slave states and–now that the South had embarked on the course of rebellion–determined they should pay in full the price of treason. It also is interesting that the rhetoric in the Tribune editorial anticipated the hard war that would develop over time in the Civil War. The slaves were as yet objects to the Tribune, but at least it recognized their military worth. Acknowledging the difference slaves could make in the war was an important first step for northern public opinion along the long, hard road to emancipation.

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About Donald R. Shaffer

Donald R. Shaffer is the author of _After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans_ (Kansas, 2004), which won the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship in 2005. More recently he published (with Elizabeth Regosin), _Voices of Emancipation: Understanding Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the U.S. Pension Bureau Files_ (2008). Dr. Shaffer teaches online exclusively (i.e., a virtual professor). He lives in Arizona and can be contacted at donald_shaffer@yahoo.com